Each airline has its own reservation system, which is a computerized system for storing and retrieving information and for conducting transactions related to air travel. With the advances of internet network, the airline reservation systems have been tailored to meet the customer demands, exemplified by the airline websites, in which a customer can make reservation, purchase ticket, plan traveling trips, together with selecting other features such as upgrading, more leg room, redeeming frequent flyer miles, rebooking canceled flight, selecting seats, purchasing day club passes, priority boarding, and others.
In addition to their own reservation systems, airlines also use a global distribution system (GDS), which is a network operated by a company that allows automated transactions with multiple airlines. Primary customers of GDS are travel agents, who can make travel booking on various reservations systems run by the airlines. For example, when a travel agency, through GDS, requests a reservation on a particular airline, GDS routes the request to the appropriate airline computer reservations system for seat availability information. Other information such as fares and flight schedules are provided to GDS from third party databases. This can allow a travel agent with a connection to a GDS to compare, choose and book various flight activities on all the airlines that are part of that GDS.
FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic of GDS operation according to some embodiments. A GDS system can connect to a schedule database, maintained by a third party, for flight schedules between two cities. The GDS system can connect to multiple airlines for accessing seat availability for the flight schedules. The GDS system can also connect to a fare database, maintained by another third party, for fare information regarding the flight schedules. Travel agencies can then connect to GDS for searching for flight schedules, seat availability, and fares.
There can be drawbacks with GDS. For example, there can be cost for the airlines associated with transactions booked through GDS, even though the transactions may ultimately be canceled. Thus low cost airlines typically do not participate in GDS, and prefer maintaining their own website as the primary distribution channel with cheapest fares. Further, GDS uses a less flexible pre-Internet message protocol, for example, getting seat availability information directly from airlines, while getting flight schedule and fare information from third party databases. Thus added values presented by the airlines cannot be presented through GDS effectively and attractively.
Thus there is a need for improving the airline distribution system.